Kyiv/Bezimenne, Ukraine
Reuters
Around 100 Ukrainian civilians were evacuated from the ruined Azovstal steelworks in the city of Mariupol on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, after the United Nations confirmed a “safe passage operation” was in progress there.
The strategic port city on the Azov Sea has endured the most destructive siege of the war with Russia – now in its third month – with Pope Francis, in an implicit criticism of Moscow, telling thousands of people in St Peter’s Square on Sunday it had been “barbarously bombarded”.
“For the first time, we had two days of a ceasefire on this territory, and we managed to take out more than 100 civilians – women, children,” Zelenskiy said in a nightly video address.
Azovstal steel plant employee Valeria, last name withheld, evacuated from Mariupol, hugs her son Matvey, who had earlier left the city with his relatives, as they meet at a temporary accommodation centre during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the village of Bezimenne in the Donetsk Region, Ukraine, on 1st May. PICTURE: Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko
The first evacuees would arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday morning, he said, adding that he hoped conditions would continue that allowed for more people to be evacuated.
POPE SAYS MARIUPOL ‘BARBAROUSLY BOMBARDED’, IMPLICITLY CRITICISING RUSSIA
Pope Francis on Sunday described the war in Ukraine as a “macabre regression of humanity” that makes him “suffer and cry”, calling for humanitarian corridors to evacuate people trapped in the Mariupol steelworks.
Speaking to thousands of people in St Peter’s Square for his noon blessing, Francis again implicitly criticised Russia.
In Roman Catholicism, the month of May is dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. Francis asked for month-long prayers for peace in Ukraine.
“My thoughts go immediately to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city of Mary, barbarously bombarded and destroyed,” he said of the mostly Russian-controlled south-eastern port city, which is named after Mary.
Francis, 85, has not specifically mentioned Russia or its President, Vladimir Putin, since the start of the conflict on 24th February, but he has left little doubt which side he has criticised, using terms such as unjustified aggression and invasion and lamenting atrocities against civilians.
“I suffer and cry thinking of the suffering of the Ukrainian population, in particular the weakest, the elderly, the children,” he said, mentioning “terrible news of children who are being expelled and deported”.
Francis called for safe humanitarian corridors for those in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, where troops and civilians are sheltering.
He also questioned if everything possible was being done to bring about an end to the fighting through dialogue.
“While we are watching a macabre regression of humanity, I ask myself, along with many other anguished people if peace is really being searched for, if there really is a willingness to avoid a continuing military and verbal escalation, if everything is being done to silence the weapons,” Francis said.
He urged his listeners to “not give in to the logic of violence, to the perverse spiral of weapons” but to choose a path of dialogue.
– PHILIP PULLELLA, Vatican City/Reuters
With fighting stretching along a broad front in southern and eastern Ukraine, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged continued US support for Ukraine when she met Zelenskiy in an unannounced visit to Kyiv.
US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in New York he would add provisions to a $US33 billion Ukraine aid package to allow the United States to seize Russian oligarchs’ assets and send money from their sale directly to Ukraine.
President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve the aid package on Thursday in what would mark a dramatic escalation of US funding for Ukraine.
Biden spoke with Pelosi on Sunday about her trip, a White House official said without elaborating.
Russia’s military has turned its focus to Ukraine’s south and east after failing to capture Kyiv in the early weeks of a war that has flattened cities, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than five million to flee the country.
In Mariupol, Moscow declared victory on 21st April even as hundreds of holdout Ukrainian troops and civilians took shelter in the Azovstal steelworks, a vast Soviet-era complex with a network of bunkers and tunnels, where they have been trapped with little food, water or medicine.
Negotiations to evacuate the civilians had repeatedly broken down in recent weeks, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other.
But on Sunday, more than 50 civilians arrived at a temporary accommodation centre after escaping from Mariupol, a Reuters photographer said.
The civilians arrived on buses in a convoy with UN and Russian military vehicles at the Russian-held village of Bezimenne, around 30 kilometres east of Mariupol, where a row of light blue tents had been set up.
One of the evacuees, Natalia Usmanova, 37, said she had been so terrified as Russian bombs rained down on the plant sprinkling her with concrete dust that she felt her heart would stop.
“When the bunker started to shake, I was hysterical. My husband can vouch for that. I was so worried the bunker would cave in,” she told Reuters in Bezimenne.
A spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said a “safe passage operation” had started on Saturday and was being coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Russia and Ukraine.
He said no further details could be released so as not to jeopardise the safety of evacuees and the convoy.
A woman sits with children as evacuees, including civilians who left the area near Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, arrive at a temporary accommodation centre during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the village of Bezimenne in the Donetsk Region, Ukraine, on 1st May. PICTURE: Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko.
Denys Shleha, commander of Ukraine’s 12th National guard brigade, speaking to television on Sunday from the Azovstal plant, said several hundred civilians remained in bunkers there, including about 20 children, and that one or two additional evacuation efforts of similar scale would be needed.
Russia’s defence ministry said 80 civilians had been evacuated from the plant.
A plan to evacuate civilians from areas of the devastated city outside the steelworks had been postponed to Monday morning, Mariupol’s city council said.
US “stands with Ukraine”
Footage posted by Zelenskiy on Twitter on Sunday showed him, flanked by an armed escort and dressed in military fatigues, greeting a US congressional delegation led by Pelosi outside his presidential office the previous day.
“Our delegation travelled to Kyiv to send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine,” Pelosi, the highest ranking US official to visit Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, said in a statement.
Zelenskiy praised as substantive four hours of talks with Pelosi focused on US weapons deliveries, adding he was grateful to all of Ukraine’s partners who visit the capital at such a difficult time.
Moscow calls its actions a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West. Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
Western nations have imposed broad economic sanctions on Russia and have been shipping increasing quantities of weapons to help Ukraine defend itself.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday it had carried out a missile strike on a military airfield near the port city of Odesa, destroying a runway and a hangar containing weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukraine by the United States and European countries.
Ukraine said a day earlier that Russian missiles had knocked out a runway opened at Odesa’s main airport last July to facilitate tourism, though Reuters could not verify if the incidents were related.
Eastern push
In the east, Moscow is pushing for complete control of the Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists already controlled parts of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces before the invasion.
On Sunday, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Synehubov warned residents in the north and east of the city of Kharkiv to remain in their shelters due to heavy Russian shelling. Reuters could not immediately verify reports of shelling in the area.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region, in a social media post, urged people to evacuate while it was still possible.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were fighting to push north from Kherson to the cities of Mykolayiv and Kryvyi Rih, and Zelenskiy said Russian troops continued to launch strikes on residential areas and had destroyed grain storage depots.
“This will only build up the toxic attitude to the Russian state and increase the numbers of those working to isolate Russia,” Zelenskiy said.
– Additional reporting by Reuters journalists
